CONTRIBUTION:Liu Tai-ying said that the businesses run by the KMT were making NT$2 billion per year before his term and that he helped it earn NT$10 billion per year

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 25, 2016
By: Alison Hsiao / Staff reporter

Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) treasurer Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) said

it is “heart-wrenching” that the KMT accused him of incurring great losses to the party during his time as treasurer, but disregarded that he had secured at least NT$70 billion (US$2.15 billion) in profits for the party during the same period.

In an interview with the Chinese-language Wealth Magazine, Liu said he had not been responsible for managing party assets, which is in the purview of the party’s finance department. “All I did was operate party-run enterprises; all I did was earn money,” he said.

The KMT recently stated in its party assets report that in 2001 alone, Liu had spent NT$42.7 billion to bail out companies that ran poorly.

In response, Liu said he had taken over the position of the chief director of party-run businesses in 1993 and stayed on the job for seven years.     [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2016/03/22
Translated and compiled by Kelly Lai

For the first time in the past three years, Taiwan’s democracy was discussed formally on an international scale in Brussels on March 15. The roundtable conference, hosted by Taiwan Corner and the European Parliament-Taiwan Friendship Group, focused on social movements, Cross-Strait relations, Taiwan’s democracy, and how the new president would affect the nation’s future development.

The chairman of Taiwan Corner and the host of this roundtable discussion, Michael Danielsen, stated that the motivation of this conference was the result of the 2016 presidential election. Plus, social movements in the past few years, such as the Sunflower Movement and the Anti-Black Box Curriculum Movement, drew European officials’ attention on events happening in Taiwan internally.

People who were invited to the roundtable conference included, Lin Fei-fan, representing The Black Island Nation Youth Front, Dr. Alice Ekman, researcher from French Institute of International Relations, and one representative from the KMT.     [FULL  STORY]

Bangkok Post
Date: 23 Mar 2016
By: Staff Writer: AFP

TAIPEI – Taiwan authorities are confiscating pebbles collected as mementos

by tourists and returning the rocks to the island’s picturesque beaches as they step up moves to preserve the scenic east coast.

In the latest geological repatriation, a cache of stones taken from outbound visitors by airport immigration were last week sent back to Taitung county, where rugged seascapes attract tourists, particularly from mainland China.

The haul of pebbles, collected over two months at Taipei’s main airport, weighed a total of 100 kilogrammes (220 pounds), according to the East Coast National Scenic Area Administration.

Fears that tourists taking stones will erode the island’s beaches have prompted authorities to put up signs at the most popular sites and at airports in recent years.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-03-23
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Just days after returning from a high-profile trip to the United States, Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je found himself under fire Wednesday for his travel spending.

Taipei City Councilor Ho Chih-wei of the Democratic Progressive Party, which usually supports the mayor, accused him of spending double the amount of his Kuomintang predecessor, Mayor Hau Lung-bin.

Within about one year of coming to power, Ko had made four official foreign trips, spending a total of NT$8.34 million (US$256,500) in public money, Ho said. In contrast, during the same comparable period in his first term, Hau had traveled twice, to Australia and Japan, and spent NT$3.99 million (US$122,700) on 20 people, according to the DPP politician.

Ko’s spending was even higher than that of controversial former Miaoli County Magistrate Liu Cheng-hung, Ho said.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/23
By: Wang Shu-fen and S.C. Chang

Taipei, March 23 (CNA) A strong cold air mass that is moving into Taiwan is

expected to bring real-feel temperatures as low as 4 degrees Celsius to parts of Taiwan on Friday, according to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB).

Along with the low temperatures, there will be rain in those areas, particularly in the New Taipei district of Gongliao in the northeast of the country and the Taichung district of Wuqi on the west coast, the CWB said.

Between Thursday and Saturday, the actual temperature will drop to lows of 9 degrees in northern Taiwan, 10 in central areas, and 11 degrees in northeastern parts of the country while southern and eastern Taiwan can expect lows of 13 and 14 degrees, respectively, the CWB said.

However, the real-feel or apparent temperatures, are likely to be 6 degrees in Taipei, 5 degrees in Keelung and Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township, and 4 degrees in Gongliao and Wuqi, the CWB forecast.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: March 23, 2016

ROC President Ma Ying-jeou said March 23 that Taiping Island is an island from

all perspectives, and claims by the Philippines government in an international arbitration tribunal that it is a rock are groundless and without merit.

“Taiping Island can sustain human habitation, has an economic life of its own and fully meets the definition of an island as laid out in Article 121 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Ma said.

“In addition to 12 nautical miles of territorial waters, the ROC is entitled to claim a 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf.”

The president made the remarks while addressing members of the international media at ROC Air Force Songshan Base Command upon their return from a one-day trip to Taiping Island in the South China Sea arranged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.     [FULL  STORY]

‘SEEING IS BELIEVING’:President Ma Ying-jeou said that the trip was organized because he wanted international journalists to witness firsthand that Itu Aba is an island, not a rock

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 24, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

At the invitation of the government, a group of foreign journalists yesterday

visited Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) in the South China Sea, marking the first time non-Taiwanese reporters have been allowed to set foot on the disputed island.

Among the invited foreign reporters were those from CNN, satellite TV network al-Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Associated Press, L’Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Bloomberg, Kyodo news service and the Yomiuri Shimbun.

Staff from 11 local media outlets also joined the tour, including the state-owned Central News Agency, the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily, Next TV and Radio Taiwan International.

The journalists were accompanied by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruce Linghu (令狐榮達), Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) and a number of Taiwanese experts and academics.     [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Translated and compiled by Shin-wei Chang and Bing-sheng Lee

Go, also know as Weiqi, is considered one of the hardest and most complicated

board games in the world. As a result, it has always been a goal for scientists to create an AI to beat world champions in the game.

AlphaGo, an AI developed by Google’s subsidiary company DeepMind, has amazed people around the world with its accomplishments. Last October, it won five games over Fan Hui, a three-time European Go winner.

On March 10, AlphaGo stunned the world again by beating Lee Sedol, a South Korean professional Go player who ranks second in international title, and the AI went on to win two more matches out of the five-game match. As the news spread and was discussed by the technological community, Aja Huang was recognized as the key promoter of the research and development team of AlphaGo. Huang has been described as the one who “instructed” AlphaGo and “designed AlphaGo’s brain.”

Born and raised in Taiwan, Aja Huang completed his PhD in information

engineering at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Instructed by professor Rémi Coulom and Lin Shun-sii, Huang published his research, “New Heuristics for Monte Carlo Tree Search Applied to the Game of Go,” in 2011.

Based on the research results, Huang predicted that Go programs could beat top human Go players in 10 to 20 years. However, he failed his prediction six years after he published his paper.

In 2010, “Erica,” a Go AI designed by Huang, beat “Zen,” a program that was publicly recognized as the best program at Go. In the same year, Erica even won the gold medal in the 19×19 Go tournament at the 15th Computer Olympiad.     [FULL  STORY]